Peter Harbison

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN

HONORARY CONFERRING OF DR PETER HARBISON

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President, Graduates, Colleagues, Honoured Guests

This university is pleased to welcome back today a familiar, popular and distinguished alumnus, Dr Peter Harbison, and to recognise with an honorary degree his immense contribution to our understanding of Ireland and the history of its culture.

And might I, on behalf of the School of Archaeology, extend an especially warm welcome to you, Peter?

Peter Harbison was educated in St Gerard’s School in Bray and in Glenstal Abbey, and then here in UCD. After he graduated in 1959 with a BA in Early Irish History and Archaeology, he secured a German Academic Exchange scholarship. Influenced by Myles Dillon, the great Celticist, he went to Marburg, where he studied Celtic archaeology under Wolfgang Dehn and Otto-Herman Frey. Mingling there with scholars from a range of disciplines gave Peter a broad range of interests and showed him the value of crossing boundaries, chronological, thematic and even disciplinary. From Marburg, he went to Kiel and then to Freiburg, where he met Edelgard, whom he was later to marry and with whom he raised a family.

Peter returned to Marburg and submitted his PhD in 1964. His German adventure continued with the award of the prestigious German Archaeological Institute Travelling Scholarship, which allowed him drive his Volkswagen Beetle around Mediterranean Europe, the near East, and North Africa.

In 1966 Peter joined Bord Fáilte, where his ability to speak European languages was much valued, and he become the editor of its flagship magazine, Ireland of the Welcomes, twenty years later. In the three decades in which he worked for Bord Fáilte, Peter remained an active researcher, publishing more than 100 items, including more than a dozen books, both popular and academic. He took ‘early retirement’ in 1995, although nobody noticed. By the time he was honoured by colleagues with a festschrift in 2004, he had published another 100-odd items.

Peter’s research career, now in its seventh decade, has had three distinct phases, each marked by a specific period interest.

His early work was on prehistory, Irish and Iberian. His doctoral research on Early Bronze Age objects in Ireland was published in 1969 in two volumes in the Prähistorische Bronzefunde series. He also published, among other things, a corpus of so-called ‘Beaker Culture’ objects in Ireland, and a survey of Central and Western European chevauz-de-frise.

In the 1970s, whilst maintaining research interests in prehistoric archaeology, Peter was drawn increasingly to the art and culture of Christianity in medieval Ireland. Architecture featured prominently in his early research on the middle ages, but in the 1980s, his focus shifted to early medieval stone sculpture and, to a lesser degree, contemporary art in other media. This allowed him to deploy his comprehensive knowledge of biblical iconography and his comparably deep knowledge of early medieval art on the Continent, particularly of the Carolingian empire. In 1992 Peter published his massive photographic survey and iconographical analysis of Ireland’s high crosses.

In the 1990s Peter added yet another string to his bow. The Royal Irish Academy invited him to publish some watercolours by the great Hugenot artist, Gabriel Beranger, and soon Peter established himself as the leading authority on Irish antiquarian topographical drawings. Naturally, yet more books and essays appeared in print.

Throughout his career, Peter has moved effortlessly between the conference hall and the parish hall, and has been as happy to write for a local history magazine as for a top-ranked international journal. He is that rare breed: a serious scholar who is also a great populariser. And anybody who has heard Peter in action will know that he is a passionate communicator. It is fitting, then, that his most famous work – and I would say his most influential work – is a guidebook. One cannot overstate the impact on Irish archaeology, and the Irish heritage industry in general, of Peter’s Guide to the National Monuments of Ireland, first published in 1970. It alerted people to our ancient and medieval sites, it explained what things were, and it identified where the key-holders lived. The only people who did not love his book, I suspect, were the key-holders. They never had a peaceful, uninterrupted, Sunday lunch again!

Peter was elected to membership of the Royal Irish Academy in 1977. In 1999 he succeeded Liam de Paor, his one-time teacher, as Professor of Archaeology in the Royal Hibernian Academy. He is an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College Dublin, and an Honorary Member of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland. I am delighted to invite our president to award an honorary doctorate to Peter Harbison.

Praehonorabilis Praeses, totaque Universitas, 

Praesento vobis hunc meum filium, quem scio tam moribus quam doctrina habilem et idoneum esse qui admittatur, honoris causa, ad Gradum Doctoratus Scientiae; idque tibi fide mea testor ac spondeo, totique Academiae.